Chapter 5

I was in the classroom at FAETU teaching a class in electronic warfare when I was called out to take an emergency phone call. It was my next door neighbor calling from the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. She told me MaryAnn was having severe abdominal pains and had been taken to the by ambulance to the hospital. I told my CO what was happening and jumped in the car to get to my wife’s side as quick as I could.

When I got to the hospital I was put in a waiting room for over an hour until a young intern who looked about twelve came in the room. He said “LT Davis?” I said “yes, how is my wife?” He said “I have good news and bad news.” Jesus, this guy must have skipped the bedside manners class. “We had to remove her right ovary, but she can still have children with one ovary.” I look at him with a question. “Why did you remove her ovary?” He said, “It’s not that rare that she had an ectopic pregnancy, that is when the zygote fails to fully transverse to the uterus and the fertilized ovum begins to cell divide in the Fallopian tube. When the zygote becomes large enough to distort the Fallopian tube it cause severe pain.

“Next question Doc. If the husband has had a vasectomy, how can this happen?” The look on the interns face was almost worth the pain I was feeling. He mumbled something like “You should discuss that with your wife.”

At this point in the narrative I have to decide whether to lapse into fiction and fabricate an emotional confrontation with the lying and cheating bitch. But, to my regret now, I must take the far less satisfying and dramatic path, the truth. I sat in the waiting room and mentally constructed the future. Do I want to divorce the slut and move into the BOQ and go through financially ruinous path of lawyers and custody battles? No. I don’t. When MaryAnn was discharged about 8PM I walked her to the front entrance and went to get the car with minimal talk. When we were on the road to Virginia Beach and the new house, I asked if she is going to divorce me and marry Victor since she appears to want to start a family with him. All I got out of her was “I can’t think or talk about anything right now. I just had surgery and I want to go to bed – alone.” We had a big ‘70s station wagon with three grade school aged kids in the back seat so our discussion was guarded. “Little pitchers have big ears” my mother used to say when she and my Dad were having “discussions.”

The next few days after were arrived there was a lot of silence around the house. About a week she said the Dreaded Words: “We have to talk.” She said “Yes, I want a divorce. I have a lawyer and he wants to talk to both of us.” I snapped back “Hell no. I will not sit in some sleazy divorce lawyer’s office and destroy our lives.”

MaryAnn said “You have to. The Virginia divorce laws are archaic and the only way I can divorce you is if you move out of the house. If I move out it is considered abandonment and I get nothing and could lose the children. You must move out so you are abandoning me.”

The next few hours were full of raised voices and accusations on both sides. I screamed at her “I am not moving out of this house and live in a tiny BOQ room!” This began a horrible period of both our lives. We had minimal communications and MaryAnn continued a campaign to drive me out of the house so she could get a divorce by charging me with abandonment. I was to sleep in a spare room while she stayed in the master bedroom with bath. I shared a bathroom with our three kids. The best thing about my marital exile I became closer to my children. My oldest boy was 11, Lori was 10, and little Jeff was 7. MaryAnn would not allow me to eat with the family; I did my own laundry and kept my room clean. I ate a large meal at the base at lunchtime and made a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and ate them in the garage while working on my Model A Ford and the Lincoln.

I know that MaryAnn was communicating with LTJG asshole, but I couldn’t really catch her. My suspicion was that the woman next door was mailing and receiving letters between the two. Since she knew I was monitoring the phone bill, she was likely making her calls from next door. Hell, they could be using carrier pigeons as far as I knew. There was no email or text messages in 1972. I really didn’t know why MaryAnn was continuing the liaison in secret. She was in complete denial of anything and brushed off the fuck meeting in Albany that resulted in the pregnancy as a onetime mistake. Her MO was all the fucking she had been doing was “just a mistake.” I would have been happier and would have given the bitch her divorce if she had said one honest thing. I believe if she had been truthful and told me she wanted a divorce so she could marry LTJG asshole, I would have divorced her right then and moved on as best I could. Without anything to back me up, I suspect her lover just wanted to continue fucking married pussy with no strings. He was five years younger than MaryAnn and it is unlikely he wanted to take on a ready-made family. Pussy is pussy, but marriage is a whole different thing. He couldn’t have been dumb enough to want a wife five years older than him with three young children. Shit, he couldn’t afford them. If he had full access to MaryAnn’s snatch, it would have lost the appeal very quickly.